Routines - How to guide (iOS)

_We know as a team at Tiimo we get very excited when we are able to bring out new features, but this one really is very special to us! Creating the new routines feature involved great feedback and suggestions from users on things that would be more helpful to them, a bit of a rethink from us on the differences between activities and routines, a big design process involving more specific feedback from super users, lots of ideation rounds, testing prototypes, really drilling into user behaviour on the app, and a development process that touches almost every other existing part of Tiimo._😅

Several months later, here we are! 🎉 We are genuinely proud of how this feature not only looks and functions but also the way that we think it will make Tiimo easier to use and more consistent with helping you get through your day. This post is the second in a series on routines, so if you want some more background to the hows and why things are changing in the feature, please check out our first blogpost here.

But now, let us walk you through how to use the new look of routines! If you are a visual learner, you can check out the screenshare walkthrough in the Routines saved stories on our Instagram or check out the images below.

Our hope is that routines will help bring calmness and order to your day, as well as making it easier for you to build positive daily habits. This post might seem long but as we are replacing a legacy feature, we want to make sure that you understand how it works so that you can really make the most out of it. However, we are sure that once you start using the routine builder, it will become a quick and intuitive way to build your daily schedule.

Create a new routine

• First of all, go into the Library on the ‘My Day’ view.
• Click Routines.

• Press the button on the top right ‘Create routine’.
• Type in the title of your routine and press ok.

• This will bring up a list of suggested activities based on your current day if you want to create a brand new routine using the existing activities on that day. If you want to add any of these, click on the activity and you will see they get added to the routine underneath this pop up window. (Don’t worry, you are able to edit and reorder the activities in your routine later).
• If you don’t want to use these activities, then you can type in another activity into the search bar. This will bring up any relevant activities from your library, or you are able to create a new one which will have an initial duration of 10 mins (again you can edit this later). Click on the activity to add to your routine.
• When you have added all the activities that you want into your routine, tap anywhere in the routine and it will make the popup disappear.

• The first thing to notice is that the duration of the whole routine shows at the top under the title. You are then able to edit each activity in the routine as usual - adding notes, checklists, icons and colours. You can also change the duration of the individual activities as well.
• You can change the order of the activities within the routine by tapping and dragging the activity up or down into the correct place in the routine.
• If you decide you want to remove an activity, you can slide it to the left and then tap the '-' button.

• You can add more activities to this routine by tapping the '+' sign at the bottom right corner and repeating the steps above.
• When you are happy with it, press 'Create routine'.
• This will add the routine to your routine library.
• It will also pull up a new pop up which shows the details of the routine you have created.
• By selecting the 'Add time' option, you can add a time if you want it to be a planned routine that starts at a specific time or select for it to be flexible and start at any time during the day.
• You can say which day you want it to start and also choose your repetition.

• Once you are happy with your options then click the button 'add to plans'.

Start the routine

If your routine is a planned one, it will start at the time that you set. You are also able to start it before by clicking the ‘Start now’ button on 'My Day'.

If your routine is a ‘start at any time’, you can click start now whenever it suits you. If you have already completed the routine that day you can mark it as done by swiping right.

In the ‘My Day’ view it will show the routine, how many minutes is left, which activity is taking place now, and which one is next. You can expand the routine to see all the activities in it by tapping at the top. Each activity is now also a checklist item, so if you complete an activity early or want to skip it, you can just check it off your list, and the routine will move to the next one. However note, that this will not give you extra time within your routine, it will just deduct that activity's time from your overall routine. You can pause routines and restart them whenever you want - if it is a planned activity, the duration will just add onto your day.

In the 'Right now' view, you will see the activity running at that moment, and you are also able to pause and finish the activity early from there as normal.

Use one of your existing routines

You also obviously can also use this feature with any routines that you created in the previous version of Tiimo. They will still be available in your routine library. However, as the previous routines were based on activities that were set at a specific time, whereas the new routines are now the sum duration of each activity, you will notice a change. Our system has taken the free time between your activities, and autogenerated a ‘free time’ activity. Before you place your routine in your schedule, we recommend going through your routine and either seeing if you still need this free time space between your activities or whether you can delete these autogenerated activities. You can do this by clicking 'Edit' to get into the routine edit screen and then slide the activity to the left to see the ‘-’ button. As now activities in routines flow from one activity to another with no breaks, you might prefer to instead add in buffer time to the activity. Once you are happy with your routine, you can click 'Save' in the top right corner. Then select your routine again from the library to finally change whether it is a flexible or planned routine, when you would like it to start and any recurrence options. Then click ‘Add to Plans’.

Please note that routines that have already been placed in your schedule before this update will not be changed or affected.

Use a Premade Tiimo routine

Tiimo premade routines are also in the routines library - just click on 'Tiimo Routines' for them to appear. Select the one that you want, edit when you want the activity to start, date and recurrence options. Then click ‘Add to plans’. It will now be added to your personal library as well and you can adjust it to your needs as you wish.

Routine in Library vs Routine in Calendar

When you have created a new routine, they live as a template in your routine library so that it is easy for you to add them to your schedule in the future. It is good to think about the routine within your routine library as being your template routine.

When you add your routine into your calendar, you are copying a version of the template over. Certain things might change - you might need to start it at a different time on certain days, or it could be that you are happy to have the routine as a ‘do anytime’ on weekends or holidays. You also might need to change or delete the activities within the schedule on some days. This is why it can really help to think about whether the changes you want to make are longterm (to the template routine) or more short term, where it makes more sense to alter the routine within your ‘My Day’ schedule.

Edit/Delete a template routine in the library

To edit the template, open up the routine library by clicking on the black library icon. Swipe left on the chosen routine where you can choose edit or delete. If you choose delete, a confirmation window will pop up to make sure that you want to delete the routine.

If you select edit, you will be able to edit the whole routine - change the title, add or delete activities, change icons and colours, add notes or checklists to activities. You can also change the order of activities, and their duration. Click 'Save' to update this template routine in your library. Please note: This will only edit the template and so your changes will not automatically update or affect routines that you have already placed within your schedule. If you need these changes, please follow the guideline below.

Edit/delete a routine from ‘My Day’ in your daily schedule

Swipe left on the routine in your calendar that you wish to change. This will bring up the edit and delete options. If you choose delete, you will have the option to:

• Delete this only - only this occurrence of the routine
• Delete this and future instances - this occurrence and all going forward (past routines will be saved)
• Delete all - this occurrence, all going forward and all past versions of this routine will be deleted

If you select edit, you will be able to edit the whole routine - change the title, add or delete activities, change icons and colours, add notes or checklists to activities. You can also change the order of activities, and their duration. When you click 'Save', you then are shown the new version of your routine. You then need to click 'update plans', and are given the option to:

• Update this only - only this occurrence of the routine
• Update this and future instances - this occurrence and all going forward (past versions of the routine saved)
• Update all - this occurrence, all going forward and past versions of this routine will be updated.

There is also a grey library folder, which if you click on will give you the following options:

• Do not update library - this is the default and will only reflect the changes for the day that you edited the routine
• Save changes in library - this will update your template in the library to this one
• Save as a new routine in library - this will create this edited version as a copy in the library, while also keeping the original template. This is ideal if you want to have the choice of slightly different routines (for example on low spoons or low energy days).

This acts as a sense check to prevent your main routine from being over written with daily adjustments.

Notifications

The notifications menu has now been updated to show routines. You can access this from the ‘Me’ View and then 'Notifications'.

You can now choose to get notifications when:

• A routine starts (e.g. Morning routine starts now. First up → Bathroom)
• Halfway through an activity in the routine
• When the activity in a routine changes (note that because activities follow each other in a routine, this notification shows the next activity starting instead of showing both an activity end notification and then a starting notification)
• When a routine is finished (e.g.→ Ending: Pack Bag)

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We hope that this has given you a good rundown of how to get started with the feature. We realise that this is a lot of information to take in, but we promise it is much easier once you get started! Please check our YouTube channel for screen recordings, or our saved stories on IG to see how things look in the app.

Note for Android users: Thanks as always for your support and patience. As is common with all development for Tiimo, we start with building new features for iOS as opposed to Android. This allows us to bring new features out faster and also learn quickly what works and doesn’t work. As Android development and debugging is much more tricky (you are essentially developing for over 13k different devices), creating on iOS first helps to shortcut a lot of the process and lets our Android developer build faster. This feature will be added to the Android roadmap and we hope will make it into the app early next year.

A huge thank you once again to everyone who provided feedback and ideas on how we could improve routines within Tiimo. An especially big thank you to our amazing team of super users and testing panel who made sure that this feature not only made sense, but more importantly, worked!

We recommend keeping an eye on our socials (@tiimoapp) for the next month as we share ideas and tips on how to get the most out of this feature. This is post two in a three part blog series on routines. You can see the previous post here. Next week we will look at how to plan out a routine before transferring it to your Tiimo schedule.

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